


let us go then, you and i

by InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Former Foster Kid Jack Kelly, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jack Kelly Needs a Hug, Medda Larkson | Medda Larkin Appreciation, Past Abuse, Racetrack Higgins & Jack Kelly Are Siblings, Sad Jack Kelly, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches/pseuds/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches
Summary: Jack is pretty sure that he’s being held together at the seams by coffee and pure force of will. And then it isn’t quite enough anymore.Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Pretty dark, please read the tags.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 24





	1. epigraph

**Author's Note:**

> Fic starts in chapter 2

**_For I have known them all already, known them all:_ **

**_Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,_ **

**_I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;_ **

**_I know the voices dying with a dying fall_ **

**_Beneath the music from a farther room._ **

**_So how should I presume?_ **

_~ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot_


	2. for i have known them all already, known them all

When they moved into this apartment, Jack and Race pinned a map to the wall where the television that they couldn’t afford was supposed to go. Sure, the place is a crappy two-bedroom apartment with chronically empty cupboards and rising damp above a late-night takeaway that sells reconstituted mince under the title of sirloin steak. But they had been starting the first steps towards their future and they had been excited, so the map had been put up. There’s no thumbtack in it now, just the hole where the pin once was, marking out their final destination. _Santa Fe._ The words are still there, just beneath the hole, though they’ve been faded by years of dust and sunlight.

But it’s been four years, and there’s a hole where Santa Fe used to be, not a pin. Jack isn’t stupid. Race still talks about it, sometimes, after he rushes into Jack’s bedroom, woken by his screaming nightmares. He reminds Jack of Santa Fe as he calms him down. But Jack isn’t stupid. Santa Fe might be a real place, on a real map, but it might as well be El Dorado for all that he’ll ever see of it. Santa Fe is a fairy story. So, they stay in their crappy two-bedroom apartment with the faded map and the toaster that trips the electricity and the microwave that hasn’t worked since Race forgot to remove the foil packaging from a ready meal and nearly burned the place down.

They’ve been living in this backwater town in Nowhere, Texas, for nigh on four years now, along with the rest of the dregs of humanity that have come and settled just like the red dust that coats everything here. And even after four years, they’re just barely getting by. If it wasn’t for Race, Jack would have put this whole damn town in his rear-view mirror years ago. At least, he would if he had a car. Cars are fucking expensive, and he hardly needs one in this town. It’s small, sure, but it’s got everything they need. It’s got enough of an economy for Jack to have scored the three jobs that he needs to work to keep them afloat despite his lack of a high school diploma. It’s got a grocery store that Jack isn’t allowed in anymore after that time he shoplifted and Medda’s theatre where he works 6.30-11pm every night plus Sunday afternoons and a video rental store because the internet connection in this town is so terrible that Netflix, even for those who can afford it, is out of the question. And it has bus connections to the nearby university that Race scored his scholarship at. So, they stay.

Jack will never be able to figure out where Race got all his smarts from. It’s not from him, that’s for sure. The only thing he’d ever been good at in school was art and once they realised that he couldn’t read or write very well then they’d even stopped letting him do that. They made him take these things called remedial classes, a stupid name, in Jack’s opinion, as they only ever made things worse. But Race? He was running rings around his math teacher by the third grade. Sure, the kid has no common sense and can’t pronounce words right to save his life, but give Race an algebra book and he’s a fucking genius. Jack’s grateful, honestly. At least his brother might get somewhere in life. At least he doesn’t have to figure out how to pay for tuition costs as well as everything else – thank god for those scholarships.

So, Jack drinks cheap instant coffee to replace an actual healthy sleep schedule and drags himself out of bed every morning to work his three shitty jobs and claps his little brother on the back when he comes home from college with A-grade papers. And they stay.

Of those three shitty jobs, Jack likes exactly one of them. In order of preference, it goes:

  1. Medda’s theatre
  2. Construction site
  3. Geno’s takeaway



Geno’s is the worst because everything about it is the worst. One day, when he’s rich and doesn’t have to work three jobs to get by ( _dream on, Kelly_ ) Jack thinks he’ll report the place to whatever kind of board or thing it is that shuts places down for being dirty. Because the place is filthy, and Jack’s lived in foster homes where he had to pick his way across the carpet to make sure he didn’t tread in dog shit, so he doesn’t use the word lightly. There’s grime on every surface, and a family of cockroaches that have made themselves a home under the sacks of potatoes in the back that they use for making the fries. Bill, the other guy who works there, likes him, at least, because he always goes and gets the potatoes for him. Bill hates the cockroaches, but he can afford to, living in an apartment with a paid-off mortgage that he inherited from his parents.

Jack wishes that his and Race’s parents had been rich. If they were going to be dead, the least they could do is leave their kids some goddamn money. Like that kid from the books that Race used to read, Harry Potter, who got left a massive vault of gold. Race had fucking loved those books. He used to take him to the library to check them out, letting him do his thing in the children’s section while Jack hen-pecked keys on the ancient library computer to look for likely job listings. But no, they couldn’t even manage that. Maybe it’s wrong to hold a grudge against people he doesn’t remember, but apparently they’d been bad enough to send a four-year-old and his three-month-old baby brother into care, so Jack figures it’s kind of justified.

The construction site is okay. It’s hard work, the kind that coats him in sweat and dust, but it’s honest and he hasn’t had to steal to feed them in over a year now, so it’s worth it.

Medda’s theatre, though. Medda’s theatre is great. She doesn’t just let Jack haul stuff around and help out as a stagehand, but she pays him to paint the sets too. Imagine! Getting paid to paint. That’s the stuff that dreams are made of, that is. Besides, Medda might be the nicest person that Jack has ever met. She was even nice to him from day one. She’s the first person to ever trust his juvenile delinquent self with keys to her place anyway. So, he goes along and pretty much does whatever needs doing and Medda fusses over him and tries to slip a couple of extra dollars into each pay packet, even though he never lets her. Medda also lives in an apartment attached to the theatre, which she gave him keys to as well. For that, she’s either very kind or very stupid and Jack still isn’t quite sure which, but he’s sure as hell not complaining about it when her kitchen cupboards are stocked with things like cereal (brand-name cereal, at that, none of the supermarket own-brand stuff) and pasta and all that shit. Stuff that fills him up properly and keeps him full for ages, that gets rid of the kind of hunger that doesn’t exactly hurt, but that gets inside of his bones and just _aches_. And she says that he’s allowed to go in and eat whatever the hell he likes. He’s about ninety percent sure that she only buys up all that food for his sake, because she knows that he doesn’t eat much at home and she lives on her own so no way is she going through that amount of food. But she feeds him and asks how Race is doing at school and lets him put her as his second emergency contact on application forms, so he can’t complain.

Basically, Jack just fucking loves Medda’s. He supposes he’s kind of lucky that he’s working there on the Sunday afternoon that everything falls apart.

This particular Sunday afternoon, he’s been working for about an hour, painting up a set for an upcoming production of _Anything Goes_ , when Medda wanders into the auditorium. The kid, Medda thinks, looks wrung out, dark circles under his eyes, the waist of his jeans loose around his middle, the back of his neck bright red and scabbed over from constant scratching, a slightly grubby, damp bandage around his arm.

“Jack Kelly, what have you done to your arm?”

He whirls around at the sound of her voice, a few drops of paint spattering onto the dustsheet as a result. Jack looks down at his arm, then plasters on a smile.

“Grease spilled on my arm last night. It ain’t nothin’.”

It doesn’t feel like nothing, certainly, but it is. Sure, Race had cursed him out when he got home from his shift at Geno’s last night with his arm looking like raw steak, courtesy of the fondly named Fred, the deep fat fryer in the takeaway’s kitchen that hasn’t passed an inspection since 2009. But it’s nothing.

Medda frowns at him, but she knows better than to push the issue. Instead, she just shakes her head and says: “C’mon. I’s got lasagne in the fridge, ‘s your favourite.”

“I don’ wanta steal your food, Medda-“ Jack starts, hand flying up to the back of his neck to scratch there.

“I ain’t eaten lunch yet, baby, you jus’ need to keep me company. There’s too much for me to eat on my own anyway.”

So, Jack puts down his paintbrush and walks through to Medda’s kitchen and lets her warm up a lasagne from the fridge while he tells her about how great Race is doing in his new statistics module and how much the professor loves him. Jack eats three helpings of lasagne. He eats it until his stomach hurts, because Medda says that he can have as much as he likes and that means Race can have more at dinner tonight. She doesn’t even say anything about it, just keeps ladling it onto his plate. She doesn’t tell him off for having his elbows on the table, either, or chewing with his mouth open, or forgetting to wash the paint and sawdust off his hands, all the things that Race tells him are bad manners and the reasons that he doesn’t want to have his fancy friends over. Jack knows that last bit is a lie, and that the reason that Davey, the only one of Race’s friends that he’s actually met, always has Race over to his house is that Race’s ashamed of the way that they live, constantly watching the electric meter and refusing to fill and boil the kettle unless absolutely necessary. But Race never says any of that, just jokes about Jack’s table manners, and he’s grateful because he doesn’t think he could handle the shame.

Finally, when a good two-thirds of the lasagne is gone, he sits back in his chair, punched in his overstuffed gut by guilt. He’s been greedy. That always was his problem. Lots of his foster parents have told him off for that. And Medda is looking at him like she can tell, so Jack jumps to his feet.

“Sorry, I should get back to work.”

“There ain’t no rush, baby.” Medda says, speaking the last part a little louder as Jack’s phone starts ringing.

Jack tugs the phone out of his pocket, an ancient thing that had gone through two owners before it got to him two years ago. The internet connectivity doesn’t work and neither does the caller ID and the battery is shit, but it can make and receive calls and texts, so, by Jack’s account, there’s nothing to bother about. Medda tried to buy him a new smartphone for his birthday last year, but he refused to take it, saying that it was too expensive and if she didn’t take it back then he’d just sell it on and give her the money. He’d won that one.

“Hello?” He presses it to his ear.

“Hey, Jack, it’s me.” _Race._ Jack’s shoulders relax. “Are you, like, sittin’ down?”

“What?” Shoulders tense again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’s wrong, ‘s just I’s got somethin’ big to ask you about.” There’s a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Davey’s roommate has dropped outta college an’ there’s a bed goin’ free an’ I know that we said that I’d stay at the apartment for at least my first year, but-”

“You wanta move in with him.” It’s not a question.

“He asked an’ I’s said that I’ll think about it.” _No no no no no fuck no._ “Jack? Whaddaya think? ‘S only what you’d be spendin’ if I were at home, right? An’ I can come back on weekends –“

“You should do it. I’ll figure out the money.” Because Race deserves to live with the friends he won’t shut up about. Because he deserves to be a normal kid. Because Race’s happiness has always come before Jack’s and it always will.

“But… what about you?”

“Hell, Race,” Jack half laughs, swiping at his nose, “most kids can’t wait to move outta the family home an’ in wi’ their friends.”

“But we ain’t most families.” A pause. More vulnerable: “You want me to move out?”

“I don’ want you to move out, you nitwit, I jus’ want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“Then stay. I ain’t stoppin’ you.”

There’s a longer pause, then Race asks. “You don’ mind either way?”

“I jus’ want you happy. If that means you stoppin’ wi’ me, then that’s what it means. ‘F that means you goin’ off an’ doin’ the normal college experience, then that’s what it means.”

“Then… I can say yes?”

“‘F you wanta.”

“An’ you don’ mind?”

“Fuck’s sake, Race.”

“Okay, okay. Thank you, Jack, you’re the best.”

“Don’ I know it.”

“I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“See you.”

Jack hangs up, taking the phone away from his ear and staring at it in his palm. Medda reaches out to brush his hair back off his forehead, looking at him with a question in her eyes. Jack likes it when Medda touches him. He can’t remember the last time anybody but Medda touched him. Race would, he knows, if he asked, but he isn’t going to. He’s not some sort of girl.

“Race wants to move in with his friend Davey.” Jack says, still staring at the phone in his hand.

And, sure, Jack knew this would happen sometime. He knew that one day Race would go to college and get a job and get married and leave him. Jack was just hoping that he would get a few more years before he did.

See, Jack doesn’t know who he is when he’s not looking after Race. That’s who he is, the only thing he’s ever been. He’s the scrawny kid who put himself between Snyder, the foster father from hell, and his little brother to stop him getting beaten. He’s the eighteen-year-old who dropped out of school to get a job so that he could get guardianship. He’s the twenty-two-year-old who’s working himself into the ground to put Race through college. Without Race, he’s just another waste product of the foster system.

And somewhere in there, somewhere in the deep dark part of himself that he doesn’t want to admit, he hates Race for it. He hates Race for making him a parent before his time, for forcing him to hold everything together enough so that the annual CPS visit didn’t declare him unfit to look after his little brother after he’d clawed them both, tooth and nail, out of that hellhole of a foster home the second that he aged out of the system. He hates Race for how hard he’s had to work, forty-eight hour shifts and all, to keep food on the table and the kid in school since he was fourteen. And Jack hates himself for thinking all of that, because he loves his brother.

“Is he going to?” Medda frowns.

“I’s said that he can.” Jack shrugs, getting up and gathering their plates to take them over to the dishwasher. “Don’ know why he’s askin’ me, the kid’s nineteen.”

“But you’s the one payin’.”

He snorts. _Ain’t that the truth._ “‘M always the one fuckin’ payin’.”

“Can you afford it?”

It’s a good question. Can he? Probably not. Jack’s never been all that good at math, but he doesn’t think that what’s left over after he’s paid Race’s rent, and then his food (because Race will need more money for food, now that they aren’t splitting the cost and the kid will be doing his own shopping, as he doesn’t know how to hunt out bargains or stretch out food to last days like Jack does) is going to get him anywhere other than a tent. And Jack wants Race to be happy at college, too. He wants him to have nice things, to be able to go out with his friends and have the childhood he never got. So, Jack will move out of the apartment and Race can go to college. It’s fine. Jack’s done the whole homeless thing before. It’s not that bad.

“Goin’ to hafta now, ain’t I?” Jack doesn’t turn around from where he’s stowing the plates in the dishwasher, knows that if he does then Medda will see the conviction written across his face. “I’s said yes.”

“ _Jack_.” She sighs, and she sounds so disappointed in him. “If you’s goin’ to struggle to make rent –“

Jack grips the countertop, white-knuckled. Not today. Any day but to-fucking-day. “We’s fine, Medda.”

“You know you’s always welcome to stay in the guest room.” She says, sounding utterly unconvinced. “I’ll even charge you rent ‘f it’ll make you feel better.”

“I said ‘s fine.” Jack turns around, shooting her a quiet, head-ducked smile. “I should get back to work.”

…

When Race does something, he doesn’t do it by halves. As in, Medda gives Jack the next Sunday afternoon off and brings over her truck – because of course she drives a pick-up – and drives them the thirty minutes to the campus. Race’s bedroom back at the apartment is as bare as the day they moved in four years ago.

Davey comes out of the brick building that Race is going to be living in and helps Race carry everything up there. Jack isn’t allowed in. The porters say so. Security reasons and all that. Race gives him a hug before he and Medda leave. Jack tries not to cry.

He falls asleep in the truck on the way back and only wakes up when the engine turns off. It takes him a moment to come to. They’re parked up at a rest stop a couple of miles out of town. Jack’s never been before, but he’s heard some of the other guys on the construction site mention it. Some even disregard their packed lunches and use their break to drive over and get food from one of the five fast food joints with their garish signs and oversized posters.

The place Medda takes him to is the kind of place that snot-nosed ten-year-old Jack pressed his face up against the windows of and salivated over the burgers and fries. She passes him a menu across the table when they sit down by the window. The menu has clip art of barbeques on it, decorated in red, white, and blue like the designer threw the fourth of July at the page and went with whatever stuck. Jack stares at it blankly.

The waitress, when she comes over, is pretty but bored. She has to ask Jack three times before he realises that she wants to know what he wants to eat. And he doesn’t have an answer for her, because he’s been staring at the menu for the past five minutes but he hasn’t read a word of it. His throat closes up. Medda must realise that something is wrong, because she orders for him, like he’s a fucking kid or something.

She doesn’t say anything, though, when waitress leaves with their order, shooting him a confused look. Jack’s thankful. He hasn’t eaten out anywhere for a decade, not since he was twelve and he and Race got assigned to Snyder. The first time they met him, under the observation of a social worker, he’d taken them to McDonald’s. The second time they met him, they moved into his house. Medda just watches him until their food arrives and Jack watches out of the window, feeling a little bit numb. His food, when it arrives, is a chicken burger with lots of fries. He doesn’t understand why the people who can eat like this everyday don’t.

“When did you last eat?” Medda asks him, once he’s a few bites into his burger. Jack just shrugs. “Jack, honey.”

He swallows, then scrunches his nose, as if he’s thinking hard, before concluding: “Friday.”

“It’s Sunday.” Medda sighs, looking at him with wide eyes. “Are you tryna starve yourself now?”

And no, he’s not trying to starve himself. He just hasn’t had the time. Or the money. “I jus’ ain’t hungry.”

“I’s real worried about you, kid.” And she looks worried. Jack wishes she wouldn’t. It’s not like he’s the kind of person she should be wasting her time worrying about.

“Don’ need to be.” Jack shrugs again, taking another bite of his burger.

She reaches across the table, past her own food, and rests her hand on his arm. “It seems like life’s gettin’ a bit rough again, for you, honey.”

Jack looks down at it, not quite sure what to do. Is his skin supposed to feel all fizzy where she’s touching him? He doesn’t believe that’s entirely normal. But he likes it when Medda touches him, so he lets her hand stay there. “Life’s always rough, ain’t nothin’ new.”

Medda looks at him like she’s got several retorts to that right on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t say any of them. Instead, she shifts uncomfortably on the red vinyl seat across from him in the booth.

“There’s this thing I’ve been lookin’ into that I’d like us to go to, together.” She says slowly, her thumb tracing circles on his arm. This can’t be good, Jack knows. Under Medda’s hand, his arm tenses, the tendons standing out, his pulse rushing. “There’s this place, an’ they does it free for people who used to be in the system, so’s you wouldn’t have to pay-“

“Jus’ spit it out, Medda.” It comes out a bit harsher than intended, but he’s too scared to worry about not being a dick to the one person that actually seems to like him.

Medda winces before the words even leave her mouth. “They does trauma therapy.”

“Nuh-uh, no way.” Jack snatches his arm back out of her grip.

“Jack, honey, you’s spirallin’.”

He slams his fists on the table at that, jolting to his feet and snarling. “I ain’t spirallin’, I ain’t traumatised, an’ I sure as hell don’ need some shrink cataloguin’ how many shades o’ fucked up I am.”

Medda doesn’t say anything for a very long time. When Jack’s head finally allows enough of the blood rush back to the rest of his body, he looks around to see every other diner in the place staring at him. One woman is covering her child’s ears. Another couple get up and move to a table further away.

“The amount you work ain’t normal.” She says, her tone soothing, as she reaches out a hand to him. Jack allows her to pull him back into their booth and shoot apologetic glances at the other diners because he’s tired, damnit, and he doesn’t have it in him to fight with her.

“Yeah, well,” he grouches, “normal don’t need the money.”

Normal doesn’t pack a backpack with what little clothes he has and tell his landlord that he’s moving out, effective immediately due to the lack of rental agreement, either, but Jack’s never claimed to be normal.

See, the idea of living in a tent had seemed funny, when Race had first called up about moving out, but apartments are expensive. And there’s this little patch of woodland behind the swimming pool - which is free to use, because of some weird government initiative to combat obesity by getting people active, and has showers and toilets and shit like that – that nobody seems to care about, other than a barely used footpath leading to the old footbridge that goes across the river. The locals call it the suspension bridge because apparently when it was built it was the height of architectural marvel with cables holding it up. Jack can live by the bridge, by the river. He can get a tent… when he next gets paid. In the meantime, he’s got a blanket. He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.


	3. have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons

The whole roughing it outdoors thing, Jack thinks, isn’t awful. If there’s one good thing about this stupid town, it’s that its weather isn’t half bad. Sure, it gets a bit chilly at night, but it’s certainly not freezing, and there’s hardly any rain. For a kid who’s been homeless in New York, November in Texas is a dream come true.

Race calls him every night at 7pm, without fail, the same way Jack imagines that normal people, the kind of people who have grandparents, call their grandparents each evening to make sure they haven’t fallen down the stairs or ended up dead with their face being eaten away by their cat. Jack’s pretty sure he heard a story about that once, on the radio at work, an old lady who was found eaten by her cats. Then Albert had changed it to a different station because it was putting him off the sandwich his wife had packed for him – roast lamb. Albert always had the best lunches. He wasn’t precious about them either, always offering Jack a spare piece of fruit or a chocolate bar. It’s lucky, really, because though Race sounds pretty well fed on the phone, a good portion of what little food money Jack has set aside for himself usually ends up getting added to the Race-living-at-college-away-from-Jack fund. Jack doesn’t mind too much though. He’s gone without for a long time, and Race hasn’t bothered him about coming home to their non-existent apartment for the weekend yet, so Jack’s living with it.

Other than the strange looks he gets twice a day from the girl at the reception of the swimming pool as he strolls in to use the showers and toilets, everything is going pretty well. Honestly, Jack’s a bit torn up about that girl, because she’s hot as fuck in that athletic way that some girls are that makes him think that she’d have really great tits if he could just get that sports bra off her. It’s a real shame, honestly, because it’s not often that his charm doesn’t work. That said, he isn’t exactly surprised that he becomes substantially less charming when he looks exhausted all the time. Still, Jack wouldn’t mind sleeping with her. Maybe she’d let him stay overnight. An actual mattress sounds really fucking nice.

Medda offers him her guest room on around a weekly basis, if he has to put a number on it. Jack’s never taken her up on the offer and he’s determined not to, not even if global warming or climate change or whatever the fuck reason Race is giving him this month to put his drinks bottle in the recycling bin rather the normal one decides that it’s going to screw up the Texas climate and have it snow or something stupid like that. No way. Jack will take her food because she offers it, because taking food is a little thing. Lots of people offer you food without expecting anything back. A bed – scratch that, a full sodding room – is an entirely different matter. There’s some sort of catch to that, even when it’s somebody as nice as Medda. It’s hard to believe coming from Medda, but if Jack’s learned one thing throughout his twenty-two years on this shithole of a space rock, it’s that you shouldn’t trust anybody. Not even nice ladies who feed you lasagne and stroke your hair and call you _honey_.

So, Jack sleeps outside for the couple of hours that he isn’t working and doesn’t eat very much and answers Race’s nightly phone calls. And if he cries backstage at Medda’s, waiting for the show to start after Race hangs up the phone every night, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

As he would tell anybody who asks, everything is thus going terribly well for Jack. And then it isn’t, because one day he looks at his phone when he’s on lunch break from the building site, sat on a dusty tire holding an empty lunchbox (which is actually just an ancient tupperware container that Medda sent him some food in once and never asked for it back) and he has three missed calls from Geno. So, he returns the call. What’s he going to do with his mouth instead? Eat? Fat chance.

At the end of it, when Geno’s explained it all, albeit predominantly through curse words, Jack gets it. He just wishes that whoever the hell reported that dump to the board of health had waited until his little brother had finished college. Jack would have gladly done it himself at that point. And that’s the big problem, really, isn’t it? Because Race is still in college and Jack now only has two jobs. And that’s a bit of a problem.

Jack’s little brother picks up on the third ring. “Racer, how’s things?”

“Good, I’s jus’ out wi’ some friends.” That makes sense. Jack wonders, in a vague sort of way, what it’s like to have those. Race has always been better at that sort of thing. It sounds as if he’s in some sort of fast-food restaurant, a McDonalds, maybe, because Race doesn’t remember the first time they met Snyder well enough to refuse to go into them like Jack does. “There a problem? You don’ normally call at this time.”

“I can call back ‘f it ain’t-“

“‘S fine, Jack. ‘S only Davey an’ a couple of others.” _Friends._ Plural.

“M’kay.” Jack takes a deep breath. “Well, Geno’s has closed. So we’s goin’ to be a little tight on money.”

“How tight?”

Jack winces. “‘Bout as much as I gives you for stuff that ain’t food or rent.”

“They’s payin’ you that little?” Race sounds shocked by it and Jack almost laughs. What does his kid brother expect from working the overnight shift at a shitty takeaway that puts dog meat in its kebabs, really?

“‘S minimum wage.”

“Fuck.” Race actually sounds upset. Jealousy rises into Jack’s mouth like heartburn. What he wouldn’t give to be that naïve. “Hey, don’ worry. I can find that.”

“How? I don’ want you gettin’ no job, Race, it’ll only be a month-“

Race sighs on the other end of the line, preparing to rehash the same argument they’ve been having since he was fifteen and Jack was nineteen. “Jack, I can hold a job an’ do school-“

Jack will not have his brother working. He would literally rather die than have his brother be forced to work. Hell, keeping his brother from having to work is the only reason he hasn’t died already, if he’s being honest. Working means bad grades. And, sure, Jack’s grades had been shit even before he got his first ~~illegal~~ job, but they’d got even worse once he’d started at that stupid little newspaper stand before and after school. Race’s grades are great, but Jack isn’t going to have them dip to mediocre just because he’s a crappy guardian who isn’t working hard enough to provide for his family.

“No, nuh-uh, ain’t happenin’.”

“Lord, you’s so stubborn-“

“I know what happens once y’starts workin’-“

“No, you know what happened when _you_ started workin’. At thirteen.”

Race says it like there was something wrong with him for starting working at thirteen and that hurts, honestly, because doesn’t he know that with the kind of locks that Snyder kept on those kitchen cupboards they’d both either have starved to death or ended up in juvie without that stupid job? Jack had done his best, so fuck him if it wasn’t good enough.

“Race-“

“No, there’s a tutorin’ job goin’ in the department for an outreach thing to schools. ‘S like, ten hours a week, tops.”

Ten hours a week. Ten hours a week isn’t that long. And it’s tutoring. That’s academic, surely. Maybe it would be good for Race. Responsibility. Something to put on his resume. Plus, he can always have the kid stop if it gets to be too much. It’s just extra incentive to get himself off his lazy ass and find another ~~third~~ job. Still, he’ll try just one last time…

“ _Race_.”

“ _Jack_.”

“Fuckin’ hell.”

“Let me do this.” Jack can hear Race pouting. “I ain’t a kid no more.”

“You’s always my kid brother.”

“Yeah, so I’s goin’ to be the one lookin’ after you now you’s decrepit an’ talkin’ just to prove to yourself you’s still alive. Lemme help.”

 _Decrepit._ Jack certainly feels it. There’s a tiredness that seems to have wound its way into the marrow and muscle of him, seeping into him, deep and aching. Jack doubts he’ll live longer than Race will. He hopes that he doesn’t. What would be the point?

“You’s, what, four years younger than me? You’s goin’ to be in a wheelchair before I is.”

Race laughs. Jack could listen to Race laugh all day. “Jus’ keep payin’ my food an’ rent an’ I’ll worry ‘bout the rest. Chill out, okay?”

“Yeah.” Jack sighs.

“Cool. Look, I’s got to go now, but I’ll talk to you tonight, yeah?”

 _He’s bored of you. His friends are more important._ “Yeah.”

…

It’s another two weeks before Medda finds out that Geno’s is shut.

Jack only has himself to blame, really. He didn’t manage to sleep the night before – it had rained, properly rained, for the first time since Jack moved out, and it made him wet and cold and miserable, chasing away any chance of rest – and the last time he ate was the night before when one of the Bowery Beauties saw his hands shaking as he was sorting things out backstage and gave him a half-disintegrated blueberry muffin from her purse. The rain is the main problem though, because even though the temperature was normal today, he hasn’t quite managed to shake the cold of it. December, Jack decides, can fuck off.

So, the interval is done and he doesn’t really have anything else to do at this point, as all the main set pieces have been moved. He figures he can clean the back room, earn his keep and all that. And the next thing he knows, Medda is shaking him awake and his elbow hurts and he’s on the floor.

“Sleepin’ on the job, baby?”

She’s smiling, but her words don’t match, those are the words of an annoyed boss. Jack shoots up from the floor, trying to ignore the points of light which swim in front of his eyes, mumbling completely incoherent apologies, begging her not to fire him because _yes,_ he has fucked up, he’s fucked up really badly, but he can’t lose this job as well.

Medda looks at him as if he’s spontaneously sprouted an extra head and lays a hand on his arm. _Oh,_ Jack’s brain goes, _there’s that fizzy feeling again. Someone touching me. Voluntarily. Weird._

“Jack-” - she cuts off his ramblings of _i’s so sorry i ain’t goin’ to do it again it was an accident i swear i’ll make up the hours_ – “-baby, breathe.” He does as he’s told, sucking in a big breath. It makes his ribs hurt. Medda studies Jack’s face, which, at this point, can only be described as anaemic. “When didja last eat, honey?”

And Jack _did_ know. He knew earlier this evening, in fact. Why doesn’t he know now? Jack feels the urge to smash his head against the wall until it knocks the knowledge back into him. Instead, he just shrugs.

“Okay. I’s got an enchilada kit in the cupboard. Y’like enchiladas, don’cha?”

He nods. Jack knows, in a distant sort of way, that he shouldn’t be stealing Medda’s food and that he’s fucked up so doesn’t deserve to eat. But enchiladas sound really, really good and if she’s going to fire him, he’d rather she does it when his stomach is full.

“Good.” Medda takes hold of his arm properly – there’s the fizzing again – as if he’s some sort of elderly man who can’t walk on his own. Normally, Jack would protest, but right this second? He’s just kind of glad that he’s got somebody around to stop him falling over. “We’s goin’ to get you fed well before you needs to go to the takeaway-“

“Ain’t workin’ at Geno’s no more.” He mumbles. “‘S closed.”

“Oh, okay.” Medda looks over in surprise, wondering why she hasn’t noticed before realising that it’s probably because she, along with the majority of the town’s population, doesn’t frequent Geno’s. This is primarily because getting dysentery is not on her personal bucket list. “Well, you wanta watch a movie tonight, hm? You an’ Race used to come over all the time to do that wi’ me.”

“You’s good wi’ him.” Jack nods, thinking back to how excited Race used to be when he got to do his homework in Medda’s apartment, where there is cable and food in the cupboards, instead of their apartment. “Was nice to have someplace safe to put ‘im while I was workin’ on the sets. Thanks.”

“An’ I liked havin’ you.” Medda shoots him a look. “ _Both_ of you.”

Jack blinks, his brain not fully processing that remark. “Did I pass out?”

“Yeah, honey. In a big way.”

“Sorry.” Jack doesn’t know exactly why he’s sorry, but he knows that he is. At this stage, it’s become his primary mental state.

“What was you even doin’ back there?”

“Cleanin’.” He shrugs. “Finished the stuff for the show.”

“At which point most people sit down wi’ coffee an’ a biscuit.” Somehow it sounds like she’s telling him off. Jack doesn’t like being told off. People usually hit him when they tell him off.

“Didn’t want you thinkin’ I ain’t workin’ hard.”

“Believe me, Jack,” Medda laughs humourlessly, “I ain’t ever goin’ to think that ‘bout you.”

…

 _Catatonic._ That’s the word that Medda would use to describe Jack Kelly right at this moment, because he’s barely even responding to her. She had to tell him to sit down on her sofa. _Tell him_. The kid hadn’t even noticed he was shivering until she took the throw blanket from the back of the couch and tucked it around his shoulders. And that’s where they’re up to now. Medda, lurking in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room waiting for the enchiladas to bake; Jack on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket and blankly staring at the television that’s currently playing one of the Indiana Jones films. Medda is ashamed to say that she didn’t exactly know what to put on for him. What sort of thing do twenty-two-year-old men even watch? Honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if Jack’s been too busy to watch television for about three years. Indiana Jones just seemed like a good bet. She realises with a start that she doesn’t actually know very much about Jack, considering she’s been the closest thing to a mother that he’s had for about four years. Probably longer, if they’re being honest.

Jack has a little brother, overworks himself, and is little short of an artistic genius. And that’s kind of it. Most of what she knows about Jack’s past comes from comments made by Race about various foster parents with their various forms of abuse, group homes from hell, and the occasional spate of homelessness when the two of them ran away. Apart from that, she’s at a bit of a loss. Jack, it seems, is too. He answers her questions when she speaks to him and says please and thank you, and that’s about it. Jack never looks ecstatic, but this is different. Usually, he makes an effort at jokes or lightness or charm. It’s like he’s had all of the life sucked out of him.

He eats all six of the enchiladas that she puts on his plate, along with a pile of rice, before falling asleep on her sofa. Medda sighs when she looks over at him, turning off the television and tucking the blanket around his shoulders. Jack looks young in his sleep, peaceful in a way she’s never seen him before. She goes to bed with something like guilt in her stomach, along with the feeling that something is terribly, horrendously wrong.

When Medda comes downstairs the next morning, she finds the word _thanks_ scrawled on a post-it note in Jack’s childish handwriting. It’s on the table next to a few neatly stacked bills. She screws her eyes shut, then tucks the bills behind the toaster to give back to Jack when she drops by his apartment.

Race gave Medda a key to their apartment when he was seventeen. He went and got his own one copied after he came home from a school trip to find his older brother on the floor of their kitchen/living room/dining room with a fever too high for the thermometer to give him an accurate reading. Jack still doesn’t know about Medda having a key. She might be the person he trusts most in the world, after Race, but that doesn’t mean that he trusts her. Trust, Jack has found, gets you nowhere. So, the key is just one of those in-case things that Medda has never had to use.

But Medda is worried. Jack looks more tired and pale every time she sees him. So, she decides that she’s just going to leave some food on the kitchen side while he’s out at work. He’ll probably guess it’s her, but the boy has to eat, damnit.

She goes and buys groceries for him, skipping the fresh fruit and vegetables aisle altogether. Jack might have essentially raised his little brother, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t twenty-two-year-old bachelor. He wouldn’t know what to do with a courgette if it hit him over the head. No, she goes with safe things, like frozen peas and raisins that come in those little lunchbox packets. She buys tinned things and long-life things, the kind of stuff that she’d donate to a food bank. Honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if Jack is relying on a foodbank now.

When she parks up outside the apartment, she lets herself wonder, just for a moment, if she’s overstepping her boundaries as an employer. And then she remembers that this is Jack and he has exactly two people in the entire world that he’s let come anything close to properly knowing him, and she is one of them. She gets out of the car and juggles the grocery bags as she stumbles up the fire-escape around the side of the building. The thing is rusty and creaks ominously, seeming to tug at the flaking bricks it’s attached to. The bricks were pale red, once, but the dust in the town has wound its way into them, staining them dark.

At the top, she tries the key in the door. It doesn’t work. She tries it three times, jiggling it in the tarnished brass lock, before she hears a noise on the other side and it swings open. It’s not Jack, but she wishes it was, partially because she nearly falls into the man, having laid all her weight against the door in an attempt to get it open. Partially because this man does not look very happy.

This man looks, in Medda’s personal opinion, like the kind of man who travelled around in the back of a small van playing as part of an under-rehearsed rock band for the majority of his twenties, only for the rest of the band members to abandon him in order to get jobs in banks and settle down with a wife and two-point-five perfect children. There is a less-than-tasteful tattoo of a scantily clad woman on his flabby bicep, shown off by a stained wife beater. When he speaks, she is hit by an aggressive cloud of the earthy-gasoline scent of marijuana. And even that can’t keep her from noticing the small piece of cheese stuck in his unkempt grey beard.

“Yes?” He sounds like he looks, gruff and irritated.

“Oh.” Medda isn’t quite sure what to say, honestly. “Hi there, I’s lookin’ for Jack?”

He’s already halfway through slamming the door in her face when he says: “Ain’t no Jack here, lady. You’s got the wrong place.”


	4. i have measured out my life with coffee spoons

Jack is pretty sure that, at this stage, he’s being held together at the seams by coffee and pure force of will. He used to have a schedule for his coffee, to make sure he didn’t use too much.

Two teaspoons of instant coffee in a morning, to wake him up. He doesn’t have access to boiling water in a morning anymore, so that’s out of the window. He used to have coffee at lunchtime, sitting around with the other guys. He drank it out of a little insulated flask that Race had won three years ago at a school raffle. Fucking amazing, that thing was, kept the coffee so warm. Jack had been sad when one of the guys accidentally ran over it with a forklift. So that was the end of coffee at lunchtime. Back when he had an apartment, he would have another two teaspoons of instant coffee when he got home between work at the construction site and work at Medda’s. He always has at least two cups at Medda’s. She never says anything about how much he drinks, so he tries to get as much fake energy in from her coffee as he possibly can. And then when he would get to Geno’s, he would cram in as many cups as he could, because the only good thing about that job was the free coffee. But now that Geno’s is gone, Jack fills an extra mug at Medda’s – three teaspoons worth, so it’s strong as all hell – and carries it back to his hideout in the woods, trying not to let any slop over the sides. Cold coffee is vile, but it stops him keeling over when he stands up in the morning, so he swallows the mugful down like poison when he wakes up each following morning. He sits there and drinks and wishes for a kettle.

That disgusting cold coffee is the only coffee Jack’s had the day that Medda finds herself staring at the door of what used to be his apartment. She stares at the closed door for a couple of seconds, then descends the fire escape, puts the groceries back in the car, and turns to stare at the front of the building. There are really only two options here. Either Jack has moved, or she’s going mad. And looking at this building, Medda is pretty sure she isn’t going mad. She’s one of the only visitors who ever comes to the apartment above the takeaway, which smells unpleasantly of congealing bacon grease and has windows fogged by condensation. No, Jack has definitely moved.

He picks up on the fourth ring. “Jack.”

“Hey, Medda.”

She can hear the whirring of machinery in the background. He’s obviously still at work. She asks anyway. “Are you at work?”

“Yeah, jus’ finishin’ up on the outta town site, why?”

“I’s goin’ to come pick you up, okay?”

On the other end of the line, Jack’s breath stutters. “Is everythin’ alright? ‘S Race alright? Have I done somethin’ wrong?”

“Everythin’s fine, Jack.” Medda fights the urge to sigh at her boy and his pessimism. “I just need a chat wi’ you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Medda pulls up to the construction site exactly twenty minutes after Jack hangs up the phone. The construction site is for a new university building, some sort of physics lecture building, so far as anybody seems to know. Perhaps Race might have some of his lectures in it. It’s difficult to envision it when at the moment the site is little more than a dusty crater with iron girders rising from the ground like some alien skeleton. The entire site is yellow and grey. Grey metal, yellow high-visibility jackets, grey dust, yellow diggers.

It’s ten minutes before Medda sees another colour, and the colour that she sees is red. She sees it just as soon as Jack’s shift finishes and he hauls himself up into the passenger seat of the pick-up, chucking his backpack into the footwell as he does so. The back of his neck is red, bloody. It’s hard to tell, with him dirt streaked and dusty from the construction site, smelling of sweat, but it’s definitely bloody. He’s been scratching again. Medda knows that that’s her fault, that it’s her that’s made him so nervous, but she hadn’t expected him to be so shaken up by one little ambiguous phone call. He clearly is, though, because he just sits there, hands in his lap, not really looking at her. Jack looks like a child waiting for the blows to start falling.

“Y’ever think it’d be a good idea to tell me you’s moved?”

Jack’s eyes flick up to hers as he winces. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” She really doesn’t want to get angry with him, but sometimes he makes it hard as all hell.

“Sorry.” He mumbles, swiping at his nose with the back of his hand.

“Are you sorry for not tellin’ me, or sorry I found out?”

“Both.”

“Hm. Where are we goin’ then?” She asks, twisting the key in the ignition.

“What?” Jack looks up so fast she’s surprised he doesn’t get whiplash.

“I wanta see your new place.”

Jack’s face hardens. “My new place ain’t none o’ your business.”

“Your new place is every bit my business.” Jack doesn’t respond, just looks away, out of the window, back towards the construction site where the other men are getting in their cars to go home to their houses and families. Medda lowers her voice, softens it. “Is it ‘cos you couldn’t afford it?” Jack just shrugs. “Hell, Jack, have you even got a new place?”

“Sure I has.” He lies, folding his arms across his chest.

“Where?”

“Meadowview.”

It’s the first place that comes to mind. When he and Race were younger, Snyder used to take them there after school every Thursday night to visit his friend. The two men would have a few beers and play some cards before Snyder drove them back. Jack had really liked that friend of Snyder’s; going there hadn’t been so bad, at least in the summertime.

The friend – Jack can’t remember his name, Race says it’s something called repression when he’s playing at being an armchair psychologist, but Jack just calls it self-preservation – used to give them these five-penny lollipops that stained their tongues blue and let them play on the grass next to the trailer park across the road. Jack has fond memories of long summer evenings spent there, stretched out on the warm grass, letting the last rays of evening sun burn their faces, or kicking around a half-deflated football. In the winter it wasn’t so fun, because once it was dark Snyder would make them come inside. They had to be quiet as mice, that was how Jack taught it to Race, quiet as mice or we get caught in the mousetrap. They never escaped the mousetrap for very long.

But still, that friend was nice. He wasn’t like Snyder, who would hit him any old time of day; this friend had to have at least three beers in him before he’d pick Jack up and pin him to the wall to smack him about a bit. Jack can respect that. He likes to think of his fictional abode as an homage to that kind friend, an obituary, perhaps. He’s doubtless drunk himself into an early grave by now.

“Whereabouts in Meadowview?”

He’s _fucked_. “Fuck’s sake, Medda, you ain’t my mom.” _As much as I wish you were._

“Well, somebody’s got to be -”

Oh, somebody has to be his mom, do they? Well, they’ve been a long fucking time coming, and if Medda wants to breeze in now then she can fuck right off. Plenty of people have tried to be Jack’s mom - social workers, group home leaders, foster mothers – and they’ve all either fucked him over or fucked off out the door. In many ways it was a relief to be with Snyder, bastard that he was. At least with Snyder, Jack knew where he stood. Snyder didn’t pretend to be nice only to toss him to the curb sometime down the road. He hated Jack, and Jack hated him, and that was good and done. 

“No, no, nobody has to be. I’s gone this long bein’ my own fuckin’ parent.” Jack snarls, yanking the passenger side door back open and snatching up his backpack from the footwell. “Thanks for the offer, I’d rather walk.”

“Where are you even goin’?” Medda calls out as he hops out of the vehicle and sets off down the pavement.

“I don’ know, to throw myself off a fuckin’ bridge at this rate.”

Behind him, he hears a car door open and shut. He resists the urge to roll his eyes, wishes she’d just stop with act already. It’s fine her being nice to him as his boss, he loves it, even, but this? This is just stupid. He can hear her heavy breathing as she rushes to catch up with him.

“I’s comin’.”

“You wanta throw yourself off a bridge too?”

“No, I want to make sure you don’.” She huffs out, before shouting: “Jack!”

Frustrated, he turns around. “What?”

“People are starin’.” She says, really quiet. Jack looks over her shoulder. Sure enough, some of the guys from the construction site are staring, sitting on the hoods of their cars, passing cigarettes back and forth. Jack would really like a cigarette right about now. “Get back in the car.” Medda says slowly. “We’ll go to mine, hm? I can make lasagne.”

And, fool that he is, he does.

…

Jack’s on break from the construction site the next day when the sputtering little old banger of a car pulls up at the front of the site. He’d walked out of the site with the vague intention of finding a nice shady tree to nap under for twenty minutes, because seeing the other guys’ snacks was starting to make his stomach hurt. Jack doesn’t want to think about the fact that he has a twenty-five cent can of soup for his lunch that he doesn’t have any way of warming up. He just wants to sleep. And he would have done too, if that car hadn’t pulled up and ruined everything.

It’s sad, he realises, how unsurprised he is when his little brother gets out of the passenger side door and marches over to him. Jack knew, of course, that Medda would spill the beans to Race at some point. He was hoping for a few more days of peace though.

“Jack, what the hell?” Race snaps, looming over him where he’s sat, leaning against the tree.

“Racer-“ Jack tries, but is promptly cut off.

“You left our home? An’ you didn’t think I might wanta know?”

 _Home._ Jack hadn’t thought that might be how Race thought of it. He supposes it was, or at least the closest thing they’ve ever had to one. It had never really felt like home, to him. Race had always wanted a physical place, a normal home. Jack just wanted to be with Race.

He rolls his eyes. “All your stuff ‘s at your dorm, don’ get your panties in a twist-“

“You left our _home_.” And damnit if Race doesn’t look really young when he says it like that. The kid is trying to look angry, but his bottom lip is trembling the way it always does before he starts crying, the way it always has done. Jack first noticed that as a tell when Race was three and he was seven and they were hiding in a closet from their foster father. It was useful, then, let Jack fit his hand over his little brother’s mouth before he started wailing. Now it just breaks his heart. “Please tell me you saved the important things. You’s got the map, right?”

It’s probably a bad thing that Jack didn’t even think to bring the map with him, isn’t it? Jack wonders what the new tenant has done with it, if they’ve just thrown it in the bin. The garbage collection round here is shocking, so Jack reckons that he could probably dig it out of the skip behind the takeaway, if it’s ended up in there. He could go and do that after work, if it’ll keep Race from crying. But he’s taken too long to answer, and now Race is blinking back tears and it’s all Jack’s fault.

“Fuck, Jack! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

 _Everything. Everything’s fucking wrong with me._ “‘S jus’ a fuckin’ map.”

“No, that map was our future. What happened to goin’ to Santa Fe?”

“Fuck’s sake, Racer.” Jack snaps. “We ain’t never goin’ to Santa Fe. ‘S a stupid thing we read about in a shitty cowboy novel as kids. ‘S as real as that stupid car o’ yours.”

It takes him saying it for him to realise that it’s true. Santa Fe was never anything other than a story that they told themselves in order to keep surviving one day to the next. They’re never going to get there. Not together, anyway.

“I still have that _stupid car_.”

It’s true, Jack knows. Race had sent him a picture of it in pride of place on his new bedside table the day he moved in with Davey, even though it only has three wheels now and most of the red paint has flaked off. Honestly, Jack can’t believe that it’s lasted this long, given that he bought it for the kid’s fourth birthday. It wasn’t like the group home they were in at the time did birthday presents, so he’d done a whole afternoon of yard work to buy it. The kid took good care of it, Jack has to give him that, though when you grow up with nothing that’s just yours, anything that is tends to get taken care of. Plus, it earned him his nickname. The one that only Jack uses now. Embarrassment, again, Jack figures.

Race shakes his head. “You’s such a dick sometimes, y’know that?”

“Whaddaya want me to say, Race?” Jack sighs, dropping his head into his hands so he doesn’t have to look at his brother anymore, fisting his hands in his hair. “That I’s sorry? _I’s fuckin’ sorry._ I’s sorry that I’s let you down again. Next time you decide to fuck off, I won’t change nothin’. I’ll jus’ wait around for when you decide to turn up at home again-“

“You said it was _fine_ for me to live with Davey.” Race sounds betrayed when he says that. Which is ironic, really, because, if anything, it’s Race who betrayed Jack, not the other way around. He’s the one who left. He’s the one who doesn’t want Jack anymore. What right does he have to pretend to care now when he’s the one who walked out?

“It is.” _It’s not._

“Then why are you actin’ like I’s abandoned you?”

“I dunno.” Jack stares at the ground, watching one ant wind its way towards another through the dirt. “Guess I’s bein’ un-fuckin’-reasonable.”

“Don’ do that.”

“What?”

“Shut me out like that.”

Silence. In the distance, Jack can hear drilling. They’re putting in cement foundations today. Jack fucking hates cement. He always ends up managing to get at least a little bit on him and cement burns are the worst.

“Where have you moved to?” There’s a false lightness in Race’s tone. “I wanta see your new place.” _Your_ new place. Not _our. Your._

Jack wonders, for a moment, about telling him the truth. About dragging him out to the woods behind the swimming pool and telling him that it’s his fault that Jack’s living in this shithole, because he decided that Jack wasn’t good enough anymore and he wanted to live with Davey. But he doesn’t tell the truth at all. It’s been a long, long time since Jack told the truth.

“‘S over on Meadowview.”

“What the fuck are you doin’ over there?” Jack just shrugs in response. “Have you repressed everythin’ ‘bout Simon as well?”

 _Simon_. So that was the name of Snyder’s friend. _Simon._ Yes, Jack remembers now. Simon had been really nice. “No, I liked Simon. He gave us lollipops.”

“He broke five of your ribs.” Race says. _So?_ Jack wants to say. _They were really good lollipops._ The younger boy sighs. “Medda said you wouldn’t go to therapy.”

Jack finally looks back up at his brother, squinting against the bright sunlight. Race’s bottom lip has stopped trembling, but he still looks really, really young. The kid has always been short, but it’s not helped by the baby face and curly golden hair. Give it two years, Jack knows, and Race will have found himself a nice girl with long hair and big eyes and a college degree. She’ll go to church on Sundays and want children and work as a nurse or something. She’ll give Race the family that Jack never could. And she’ll be nice to Jack, of course she will, because she will be nice. But she won’t want their kids around him. She’ll be annoyed at Jack for making Race worried and sad, and she won’t want Jack being a bad influence on their children with the way he swears like a sailor and doesn’t know how to control his anger.

“You two started my fan club or somethin’?”

“No, we’s started the Save Jack From Himself club.”

Jack schools his face into something like neutrality. “Y’ever thought maybe I don’ want savin’?” He says it, and he means _save me._

“You don’ mean that.” Race takes a step back, eyes wide. He looks like Jack’s just slapped him across the face. Jack doesn’t say anything, just stares him down with hollow eyes. Race clears his throat and fixes his eyes on a point over Jack’s right shoulder. “Listen, Dave’s in the car. We can wait ‘til you’s done at work an’ then-“

Jack looks back down at the ground. The ants are carrying a leaf together, now. “I’s busy tonight.”

“Y’know what? Fine. Be like that.” Race throws his hands in the air and stomps back to the car.

Jack watches as he walks away, as he slams the door, as he waves his hands around while he tells the driver – Davey, presumably – something. And then Davey gets out of the car and starts wandering over. Jack wonders whether Davey is going to hit him for upsetting Race. He probably deserves it, but somehow he doesn’t think it’s very likely. Jack’s met Davey a couple of times. He likes the kid well enough, though Jack’s bar for Race’s friends is pretty low – so long as they aren’t going to drink, do drugs, or commit a crime, then they’re fine by Jack. Davey fulfils all of these criteria; in fact, the kid actually has a bit of a stick up his ass when it comes to doing things by the book. He’s a nosy shit who doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up, but he’s good for Race and, honestly, Jack doesn’t half mind him.

Davey sits down next to him, leaning against the tree. Jack wants to tell him to be careful that he doesn’t get ant bites on his bare legs, then realises that he, too, is wearing shorts. Well, they’re a pair of thrift-store cargo pants that he cut off at the knee, and that’s basically the same thing.

“Eddie is really worried about you, you know.” 

_Who’s Eddie?_ Jack wonders for a moment, then remembers that Davey means Race. Because Race goes by Eddie now. Because he doesn’t want to be associated with Jack in any way, including the car that Jack bought for him when he was four. That’s right.

“He don’ need to be.”

“He spends an hour every night after he talks to you fretting about whether you’re working too much and eating enough.” Davey points out, seemingly unimpressed. “What are you going to do once Eddie’s done with school?”

“Eh?”

“Well, he isn’t going to need you to work all those crazy hours, anymore. Are you going to do your art?”

Davey’s really hung up about Jack’s art, just like Race is. Race used to hang Jack’s pieces on the walls of the apartment, putting them up with tape. Jack was always trying to get him to take them down, it was fucking embarrassing, but Race never would.

“I ain’t good enough for that. I dunno what I’s gonna do.”

“Oh, come on, your art is phenomenal!” Davey smiles. “You must have something in mind?”

Jack shrugs. “I dunno, off myself, probably.”

Davey stays very quiet, for a very long time, before he says: “I can’t believe you’d joke about something like that.”

A joke? Jack supposes it had been, at first. But the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. The more he can’t see any reason not to. Because he’s tired, damnit, and as soon as Race is set up and sorted, it’d be nice not to be tired anymore.

“Who said I was jokin’?” Jack rolls his shoulders, tilting his head back against the tree and staring up at the chinks of blue sky peeking through between its branches. “‘S no real point me stickin’ around once Race’s outta school. He won’t need me anymore, he’ll be livin’ somewhere wi’ a white picket fence an’ two kids in the picture. He ain’t gonna need good-for-nothin’ Uncle Jack comin’ round for Sunday lunch, is he?”

“No, you know that that’s stupid.” Davey says, sounding annoyed. Great, just another person Jack’s managed to piss off. “Ed has scholarships – he won’t have any tuition fees. He could pay any student loans off with ease within two years of graduating. Plus, if you weren’t funding him, he’d be able to claim bursaries. He doesn’t need you now.”

 _He doesn’t need you now._ The words echo around inside of Jack’s skull, bouncing off his brain, making his head hurt. _He doesn’t need you now._ Davey must realise, when Jack doesn’t say anything, that perhaps he’s upset, because he tries again, a little more nervous.

“I didn’t mean – Eddie needs you, of course he does, but financially he’d be fine without you.”

“Guess you’s right.” Jack says, in a voice that he doesn’t quite recognise.

 _He doesn’t need you now. He doesn’t need you now. He doesn’t need you now._ And, no, Jack supposes he doesn’t. He’s just been fooling himself, all this time, that Race is better off when he’s around. But he isn’t. Everything would be better for everybody if Jack just wasn’t around. And Jack’s selfish, he knows he is, but he’s not that selfish. _He doesn’t need you now._

As he walks away, Jack wonders whether it’s possible to drown himself in coffee.


	5. i know the voices dying with a dying fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack attempts suicide in this chapter. If you are feeling like you want to hurt yourself, please please please go to [this website](https://www.suicidestop.com/call_a_hotline.html), find the suicide hotline for your country, and CALL IT. I’ve been there, and I know it’s an uphill battle, but I promise that life gets better on the other side of the hill.

Jack figures that if he was doing this properly, he’d pick some place really poetic to do it. Somewhere that had meant something to him. Except these four years have been the longest he’s ever stayed in one place in his entire life and the constant working hasn’t really given him chance to get attached to anywhere special. This bridge seems as good as anywhere.

For having had this idea in the back of his mind for a while, Jack figures he probably should have thought a little bit more about how to actually go about it. There’d been a kid in the Refuge (and what a fucking joke the name of that group home had been) who had scars on his arms. Neat little lines, like dominoes or toy soldiers, marching up and down his arms in gradations of white and pink and red. He’d been an alright kid, let little Race run his toy car up and down his arm over the ‘speedbumps’. He’d told Jack once that it’d only take three packets of sleeping pills. Jack sure hopes that the kid was right. Once, when Jack got dumped back in there after a stint in juvie, he’d shared a room with that kid. Jack can’t remember the kid’s name. Race would probably tell him that’s his post-traumatic stress disorder helping him to compartmentalise or some shit like that. But, anyway. The kid hadn’t minded Jack’s shouting and screaming, had just ignored it like it wasn’t going on, until the day that Jack shouted _why ain’t anybody fuckin’ listenin’?_ And the kid had replied _because people only listen once you’s dead._ And that had been the end of that.

Jack finds, as he washes down handfuls of sleeping pills with straight vodka out of a plastic bottle, that he isn’t too bothered about people listening. Who’s even around to listen, anymore?

He found two of his foster moms overdosed in their bathrooms. He’d been investigated for that – one foster mom is unfortunate, two looks like it’s planned – but they let him go once they figured that he was a troubled eight-year-old, but he wasn’t the kind of troubled that jammed heroin needles in his foster moms’ arms to kill them. Jack knows too well what dead bodies look like and how much it fucks up the people who find them. He still sees those foster moms’ faces sometimes, asking him with blue lips if he couldn’t have found them a little bit sooner. He doesn’t want anybody else to have to find his. He can be a dick, but that’s another level.

He feels courageous in the way that his stomach churns and swills as he stands up, some sort of bravery in the pills or the alcohol, and he works to climb the railing to the bridge with shaky hands. Nobody can find him at the bottom of the river, right? He’ll just be gone and that will be that and everybody can just carry on with their lives without having to listen to any of his shit. Nobody has to listen. Not even when he’s dead.

There’s a buzzing in his pocket. Jack can’t answer the phone stood on the railing, so he gets back down and, in doing so, kicks over the mostly empty vodka bottle. It rolls off the edge of walkway, disappears down into the churning water, buffeted by the wind. Jack wishes that he could switch places with it.

“Hello?” His voice sounds strange in his own ears, distant somehow and strained, like he hasn’t used it in days.

“Hey, Jack – is everythin’ okay? You was supposed to be here an hour ago?” That’s Miss Medda’s voice. She’s kind. She keeps her cupboards stocked with his favourite foods. He’s late for his shift at the theatre. He’s let her down. _Fucking idiot._ “Have you overslept or somethin’, baby? I can get Derek to move -“

“Do –“ Jack’s voice cracks, “d’you need me, Medda?”

He’ll go, if she needs him. If she just says it, says that she needs him, he’ll get right down off this bridge and stick a couple of fingers down his throat to get rid of these stupid pills and he’ll go and do his job. Jack doesn’t fully know whether he wants her to say it or not.

“Where are you, Jack?” Medda’s voice sounds urgent, irritated. “Sounds like you’s outside.”

That’s a no if he’s ever heard one. That’s okay. He wasn’t expecting her to need him. Nobody does, now.

“I’s on the suspension bridge.” Lying takes energy. Jack’s tired.

On the other end of the line, he hears something crashing, like a prop being knocked off a table backstage. He hopes that isn’t his fault.

“What you there for?”

He doesn’t answer. What is he here for? Is he going to jump over the railing? He hadn’t intended to, consciously, at least, when he walked here, just take the pills and wait. But now he’s thinking that he doesn’t want to be the dick that traumatises whoever finds his body and it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. It’d be pretty easy.

“Jack, honey,” Medda’s voice cuts through his imaginary descent towards the water, “is somebody with you right now?”

“Nah. Jus’ me.”

 _He doesn’t need you now._ Race and him had always been inseparable. Or maybe he’d just stuck to Race like glue. Maybe it wasn’t reciprocal. _He doesn’t need you now._

There’s a deep crackling breath on the other end of the line, or maybe it’s the wind going past his ears. “Are you ‘bout to do somethin’ stupid?”

Jack laughs then, short and sharp and not quite sure what’s funny. “When ain’t I?”

“ _Jack_.” A door slams. Maybe somebody has gone on stage in the theatre. Jack gets stuck on that, a little, white spaces in between his thoughts. Maybe somebody has gone on stage. “Okay, baby, I need you to stay where y’are, yeah? Stay on the line wi’ me, okay?”

“Okay.” His vision has gone a little bit fuzzy. He wonders if it’s the pills, or him just being useless again.

“Talk to me, honey.” She sounds out of breath, like she’s outside. Jack wonders if she’s taken up smoking again. He’d really like a cigarette right now. He should have bought a packet. Race hates them, but that’s okay. _He doesn’t need you now._ “What you been drawin’ lately?”

“Nothin’ important.” His sketchbook got wet in the rain the other night. Got ruined. It doesn’t matter. He hasn’t drawn anything in weeks. He’s never drawn anything good.

“‘S always important. You’s important.” That’s the funniest thing Jack’s heard all day. He lets out a laugh that’s slightly hysterical. “Can you hear me okay?” She asks.

Jack can hear her over another door slamming, then a low rumble starting up. “Yeah.”

“Whereabouts are you on the bridge?”

“In the middle.”

“Can you walk to the end for me, baby? Get yourself off the bridge?”

Can he? Jack starts walking, or he thinks he does. He’s pretty sure that he’s moving his legs, but they feel like they belong to somebody else. His body doesn’t feel entirely his own anymore. He isn’t sure if it’s ever been entirely his own. His body has always been just sort of there. It’s there to do things. To stand between Race and Snyder, to be a walking ATM.

“I don’ feel well, Medda.” He sounds pathetic, like some sort of kid. He feels sick, but he doesn’t want to be sick. Being sick will get rid of the pills. Being sick will ruin everything.

“I know, baby, I know. Just start walkin’, okay? You’ll feel better.” Medda pauses, breathes. “Have – have you taken anythin’? Been drinkin’?”

“Took some sleeping pills.” Jack doesn’t bother mentioning the vodka. It doesn’t seem very important.

“How many?” He doesn’t say anything. He can’t quite remember. “Jack, how many?”

Medda sounds mad. He doesn’t want her to be mad at him. He hasn’t even done anything to make her mad. Not this time. “You mad at me?”

“No, honey,” Medda says, her tone softer, and the tension leaks out of Jack’s hunched shoulders, “I jus’ need you to tell me how many pills you took.”

“Best part o’ three packets?” He blinks, shrugging, then realises that she can’t see him. _Idiot._ “I dunno. ‘M sorry. Didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“I ain’t mad, I promise.”

Jack stops a minute, his vision growing fuzzier, tries to breathe through the urge to vomit. “Why is I walkin’ off this bridge, Medda?”

“Because I don’ want you hurtin’ yourself.”

“Why not?”

“ _Jack_.” She sounds like she’s crying. He wonders if he’s hurt her instead of himself. He hopes not. He’d rather that he was hurting than Medda.

“I don’ wanta be on this bridge.”

“Yeah?” She sniffs. “Where d’you wanna be instead, hm?”

 _At the bottom of the river._ “Santa Fe.”

It’s true, sort of. He has always wanted to go to Santa Fe, ever since he and Race first read about it in that ancient cowboy novel they’d had in one of his foster homes. It had looked so nice, all clean and green and pretty. Jack had thought he might be happy there. Fucking idiot. He’s never going to be happy anywhere.

“I ain’t never been. Let’s take a trip, me an’ you an’ Race, huh?”

“Race won’t wanta come.”

Race would, Jack knows, if he was only going with Medda. But he won’t want to see Jack. _He doesn’t need you now._ Maybe the two of them could go. Maybe, if Medda’s feeling really nice, they might take his ashes. He wouldn’t mind his ashes going to Santa Fe. Has he ever told anybody that he wants to be cremated? He doesn’t think so. Jack hopes that they don’t just bury him. He doesn’t want to be worm food.

“We ain’t asked him.” Medda says.

“He won’t.” _He doesn’t need you now._

“Have you spoken to him this week?”

“Yeah.”

On the other end of the line, the rumbling stops. A door slams again. Maybe somebody else has gone on stage. “How is he?”

“Happy.” _Or he was, until today. Until I fucked everything up._

“That’s good. Can – can y’think ‘bout somethin’ that makes you happy, Jack?”

Can he? Jack doesn’t think so. He’s happy, sometimes, when he’s with Race. When the kid gets a good grade and comes home with a big smile on his face. When Medda sends Jack home early and they get to watch a movie together on the little screen of Race’s ancient laptop.

“Jack?”

Jack doesn’t suppose that’ll ever happen again. _He doesn’t need you now._

“Jack, you still there?”

“No.”

He hears her mutter something that sounds like _thank god_ on the other end of the line. “Whaddaya mean, no?”

“No. I can’t think o’ anythin’ that makes me happy.”

“What about paintin’?”

“Ain’t much fun no more.”

Jack hears a beeping noise in his ear. It takes him a moment to realise that she’s hung up. She doesn’t need him. She wouldn’t have hung up if she needed him. Jack looks down at his phone. It feels heavy in his hand. Lifting it feels like too much effort. His head hurts. His stomach roils. Somebody is touching his face. Somebody has their hands on either side of his face. It’s Medda. He thought she was at the theatre. His vision goes a little bit fuzzier. _He doesn’t need you now._


	6. beneath the music from a farther room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for semi-gory injury/medical descriptions. Just in case that’s going to gross you out. 
> 
> The song referenced in this chapter is Fallen Angel by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, featured in the musical Jersey Boys. I had the privilege of seeing said musical in Manchester two years ago and it is my favourite live performance I’ve seen of any show to date. If you haven’t listened to/seen it, you should, it’s phenomenal. This song was written by Frankie Valli after his youngest daughter passed away from a drug overdose – you’ll start to see the connections. If you’d like to cry your eyes out, you can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQl5t8YPSAc) whilst reading this chapter. Also, enjoy playing spot the Little Shop of Horrors reference.

When Jack wakes up, there’s beeping and his throat hurts. In fact, his throat really hurts. His throat hurts all the way down into his stomach and all the way up into his nose. It hurts and there’s something _in_ there.

Jack’s eyes fly open at the same time as his hands fly up to his face. It’s a tube. There was a kid called Eliot in one of the group homes who had to have a feeding tube up his nose and down his throat. Jack remembers the way that he used to scream whenever the group home leaders would force a new one in. Sometimes, if they were low on staff, they’d make Jack hold him down while they did it.

“Jack, baby, you need to relax. There’s a tube that’s helpin’ get rid o’ all the crap you swallowed, nobody’s chokin’ you.”

“Mr. Kelly, you need to-“

“Don’t let him-“

“Ah, there he goes!”

Jack rips the tube off his cheek and yanks. It burns, a retching pain that follows the tube all the way out, tearing up half the tissues in his nose and throat as it goes.

“Fuck-“

“Mr. Kelly, please stay still-“

“Get the fuck away from me!” Jack shouts, flinging the tube away from himself.

He’s supposed to be dead, so who the hell are all these people in green clothes with bright lights who are trying to kill him again? One of them makes a grab for him and Jack is having absolutely none of it. He rolls away faster than they can grab him, tumbling off the bed and smashing into a plastic wheelie table that collapses the second he hits it on his way onto the floor. Stuff spills everywhere, every piece of medical equipment under the sun, scalpels, bottles, cotton pads-

“Please, please, give him a minute to calm down.” Medda begs the nurses who are closing in on him. “He has PTSD.”

“Don’ have fuckin’ PTSD,” he shoves himself backwards across the floor, ignoring the way that random pieces of medical equipment go skittering out across the linoleum, syringes and beakers making a hasty retreat as he backs himself into a corner, “these fuckers are jus’ tryna choke me-“

“Jack, honey, nobody’s tryin’ to hurt you.”

The nurses stop, look at one another, then at Medda. “Get him under control, then call us back. We need to make sure he hasn’t done any damage yanking his tube out.” 

The nurses retreat and Medda just looks at him, curled in the corner that he’s managed to back himself into. And then he starts to shake.

Jack knows what this is, the familiar monster in his chest that’s trying to claw its way up his throat, the way that his head starts to spin and his skin starts to burn. And he also knows that the only way to get rid of it isn’t exactly going to go down very well. He stops being able to breathe, his throat closing up even more than when they had that tube down it. _Fuck it_. He snatches up the scalpel that fell off the table when he collided with it, flicks off the cap with shaking fingers, and jams it into the centre of his palm. Within seconds, he can breathe again and the monster is slinking back down into his chest. So what if Medda is staring at him like she has absolutely no idea who he is? He’s okay. He’s fine. He’ll be fine.

Medda just helps him back into bed and holds his uninjured hand while the doctor looks up his nose and down his throat and bandages his hand and gives him a tissue to make his nose stop bleeding from where he ripped the tube out. The doctor tells him that he’s going to be just fine. Jack feels a bit disappointed. It’s not until the doctor leaves him alone with Medda that she asks.

“How come y’thought it was a good idea to stab yourself in the hand, hm?”

“Stops the shakin’.”

Jack learned that one the third time he had one of these body-shaking, skin-burning, can’t-fucking-breathe fits. He was twelve, three weeks into living with Snyder, a man who had nearly cracked his head open the night before. Jack was shaking so badly that the knife he was using to cut up a tomato slipped and lodged its blade in the fleshy part of his finger between his knuckles. It hurt so much he cried, but it stopped the shaking. Jack’s shaving razors have served two purposes ever since.

“That’s a panic attack, honey. You don’ need to stab yourself to get rid of it.”

Huh. _Panic attack._ If it has a name, Jack figures that means that other people have them. It’d be nice to not have to make himself bleed in order to get them to stop. But also, panic attack sounds a little bit like something that a teenage girl might have, and that is just unacceptable.

“Works, though.” He shrugs. Medda just sighs.

Jack leans back against the pillows. There are two of them, which seems like a lot for one person, but he sure as hell isn’t complaining. He’s never been in a bed with more than one pillow before and it’s actually kind of nice. Like how he imagines drinking champagne would feel, decadent somehow.

“Please don’ call Race.” He whispers.

“Jack, baby-“

“Please, Miss Medda.” He chances a look at her, but Medda just stares back. _Fuck._ “Nobody’s gonna let me look after him anymore, are they?”

“Nobody can do anythin’ ‘bout this other than you an’ him, Jack.” She squeezes his hand. “Neither of you’s in the system anymore.”

“They’s gonna put me in the loony bin though.” Jack tries not to cry. “They’s gonna lock me up.”

He hates being locked up. He can’t even stand getting lifts anymore, the way that he’s trapped in a tiny, airless box. It reminds him too much of the closet Snyder used to lock him in, too much of the solitary confinement cell in the juvenile delinquent centre.

“I think it’s called a psych ward, honey, an’ you don’ need to end up in one if we gets you some help, okay?”

_Help._ Lots of people have tried to help him. Nobody has ever succeeded. Jack lies very still and stares at the ceiling, categorising all the different ways he could try again. Pills hadn’t worked. Not jumping off a bridge, either. He doesn’t own a gun. Mainly he just finds himself wishing that Snyder would turn up again and beat him too badly for him to wake up.

“‘M sorry, ma’am.” He says, finally, because it needs saying. Because Medda doesn’t deserve to deal with all the shit he’s dragged her into.

“None of that, Jack, ‘s Medda.” She says firmly, like the very first day he met her. It had taken him a week to stop calling her ma’am. “What you sorry for?”

“For makin’ you drag me to the hospital.”

“You ain’t gotta be sorry for that, baby. I’d rather you were sorry for tryin’ to kill yourself.” Jack flinches at her words. _Do people really keep having to bring it up?_ It’s like they want to remind him how much of a failure he is. Can’t even kill himself properly. “Can you promise me that you won’t try again?”

Jack stares up at the ceiling. It’s got those cheap plastic ceiling tiles, the kind they used to have in one of the group homes. If you’re careful, you can stand on a chair and slide one of them aside to get up into the crawl space. Sure, you have to make sure you only put your weight on the metal supports, and not the tiles themselves, but Jack has fond memories of that crawl space. He wonders if, if he said it was for therapeutic reasons, they’d let him do the same thing here. Probably not. “I ain’t goin’ to try to jump off a bridge again.”

Medda levels a look at him. “That ain’t the same thing, an’ you know it.”

“Look, Medda.” Jack sighs, finally turning to look at her properly. “I ain’t goin’ to shoot myself in the head or hang myself from a beam or nothin’. I ain’t that much of a jerk to whoever finds me. But ‘f there’s a car comin’ down the road about to hit me, I ain’t movin’ outta the way.”

Medda looks at him for a long moment, her expression utterly unreadable, then drops his hand and excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room. When she comes back, her eyes are swollen, and she doesn’t say very much to Jack at all.

She speaks to the doctors, though. They talk to her like he can’t hear anything, like the sleeping pills wrecked his hearing or something. They say words like _malnourishment_ and _trauma_ and _clinical depression_ , and they say that if they’re going to let him out then Miss Medda will have to sign a suicide watch thing, to make sure that he doesn’t try to top himself again for at least another forty-eight hours. Jack figures that once the forty-eight hours are up their careers get a free pass and nobody will bother about him trying again. Medda tells them to fetch her the paperwork. Jack rolls over to face her, propping himself on his side in a way that makes his sore stomach ache like all hell.

“You don’ have to stay, y’know. This ain’t your shit.” Jack knows that if she leaves it will probably mean they’re going to put him in some sort of padded room, but this isn’t something that Medda deserves to deal with. The kind of people they put in those rooms are usually high on something or other anyway, aren’t they? Or at least they are in the movies. So long as he doesn’t have to feel this shit, Jack really doesn’t care.

“No, Jack, ‘s very much my shit.” Medda says, pressing her lips together. “I shoulda seen this comin’ a mile off.”

_Why?_ “Nobody else did.”

She fixes him with a stare. “Nobody else saw you every night.”

“I didn’t know I was goin’ to do it ‘til yesterday.” That, at least, is honest. Before yesterday, it had been an entirely hypothetical seedling of a plan.

“Not what Davey said.” Medda raises her eyebrows, something vaguely accusatory in her eyes. “He said you sounded like you’d been plannin’ on somethin’ like this for a while, that he jus’ seemed to have pushed the date forward.”

Jack’s aching stomach seems filled with solid ice. “You’s told Davey?”

“He was with Race when I called.”

“Oh.”

Jack tries to fight down the monster that threatens to claw its way up into his throat for the second time today. They’ve taken all the blades out of the room now, and though Medda _says_ there are other ways to deal with those ‘panic attacks’ or whatever they are, Jack really doesn’t want to find out what those other ways of dealing are.

Of course, of course she’s told Race. She’d probably have to, right? Race is his next of kin and all that, or at least that’s what it says on all of the forms that CPS used to make them sign. Jack wishes she hadn’t, in a way, so that Race didn’t have to carry on knowing the kind of person that his big brother is.

“I told him not to come to the hospital. I didn’t want it to throw you off.” Medda frowns at Jack’s vacant expression, reaching out for the snakeskin purse that her cell phone is doubtless in. “I can call him again. Ask him to come visit.”

All Jack knows is that if it was the other way around and if Medda had called him saying that Race had tried to kill himself, nothing that she said, nothing that anybody said, an entire fucking army could keep him away from the hospital where his brother was. But it never had been the other way around, had it?

“Nah.” He says, and Medda’s hand freezes in her purse before slowly retracting. “‘S fine.”

For the first time in his life, Jack doesn’t want to see his little brother. In fact, other than Snyder, Race is probably the last person in the world he wants to see. He wants Race to forget he even fucking exists, like the kid has been pretending to since he went off to college.

They keep him in until mid-afternoon, when they’re satisfied that he isn’t going to throw up the stale sandwich and watery Jell-O they gave him for lunch, and then they send him to a different waiting room to talk to a different doctor before they agree to let him out.

His exposed arms prickle with goosebumps as the overhead air conditioning unit turns its icy gaze on him. A glance at the thermostat on the far wall, a piece of red insulation tape cutting it in half, is enough to reveal why. Following Medda’s lead, Jack sits down on one of the low-backed chairs, the kind they have in banks where they’re designed to look comfortable without actually being comfortable all. When he sits, it’s hands down first for a furtive feel at the coarsely woven fabric, ensuring the slightly dark stain in the middle of the aggressively green seat isn’t freshly made. It’s dry. He settles. Shifts. His leg, bouncing; the sole of his boot squeaking on the brown speckled linoleum. He picks up a magazine. _Better Homes and Gardens._ Almost snorts, because he figures that any sort of home or garden would be better than where he’s living now. Flicks through the pages, listless, the edges of which have been dulled by so many fingers. A nurse walks through. Jack wonders if he’s become invisible.

“We should do a production o’ this.” Medda says suddenly.

Jack turns to look at her. “Hm?”

“ _Jersey Boys_.” He looks at her blankly and she points upwards, indicating for him to listen to the music that’s drifting in from some other room. Jack hadn’t even noticed it. “ _Fallen Angel? Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons_?” Jack shakes his head and Medda rolls her eyes with a smile. “We need to get you watchin’ some more musicals, baby.”

“They’s a bit stupid.” Jack shrugs, looking down at his hands where they’re resting on his knees. “What kinda weirdo sings out their feelin’s?”

“Better than keepin’ ‘em all bottled up.” Medda says, reaching across to squeeze his hand. He feels a fizzing under his skin and his brain sort of zeroes in on it. It’s a surprise, then, when he hears his name.

“Mr. Kelly?” He looks up. A grey-haired woman is standing in the doorway, one foot on the linoleum of the waiting room, the other on the linoleum of the corridor, that one a sort of yellow-green that must be excellent for concealing vomit stains.

Jack nods and stands up. The woman smiles and indicates for them to follow her up a flight of carpeted stairs tucked into a corner of the building until they reach the third floor. The corridor she leads them down is deathly quiet, almost oppressive with its low ceilings and flickering overhead lights.

“Would you like some water?” The woman asks, gesturing for Jack to sit.

He shakes his head as he sits down, perching, barely allowing himself to touch the seat. He shifts. How do you sit in a counselling session? How do you sit to convince somebody you’re okay? How do you sit like somebody who isn’t suicidal? He crosses his legs. Uncrosses them. Looks around. The room is painted sunshine yellow. It has a desk and a computer chair and an armchair for the woman to sit in and an ominous filing cabinet. The walls are covered in pictures, both framed and unframed, of idyllic landscapes and smiling, stock photograph children. Between the chairs is a glass coffee table that Jack remembers seeing in IKEA when Medda had taken him and Race there once.

“Hi, you must be Jack Kelly. I’m Dr. Roberts.”

The grey-haired woman smiles, extending her perfectly manicured hand to him. Jack ignores it, only grunting in response. This doesn’t seem to deter her. She smiles, bright and wide with artificially whitened teeth, perfectly straight. Jack wonders how much it cost her to get them done. More than he earns in a year, probably. She sits down in the armchair, producing a clipboard which she sets on her lap. Then she leans forward, just enough to seem interested.

“Your mom tells me that you’ve been having some issues with your mental health.”

“Medda.” Jack corrects her.

“I’m sorry?” The doctor doesn’t drop her smile. It’s irritating, somehow, this forced cheerfulness, and it only spurs Jack on in his quest to be as rude as humanly possible in order to get her to leave him the fuck alone.

“That’s Medda.” He jerks his chin at where Medda has sat down in the chair slightly behind him. “She ain’t my mom. My mom’s dead.”

The doctor’s face twitches, the mask dropping for only a moment before she notes something down on the clipboard. When she looks back up, the smile is gone, but it’s replaced by a similarly unbearable stock sympathetic look.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” She doesn’t sound very sorry.

“Don’ be.” Jack doesn’t exactly know if his mom is dead, if he’s being honest, but she might as well be, for all the good she’s ever done him.

“Okay.” He’s got to her, Jack can tell; she doesn’t know quite what to do with him. “Why don’t you tell me about how you’ve been recently?”

He shrugs. “Tired.”

“Do you have a job, Jack?”

“Three.”

“I’m sorry?” She still doesn’t sound very sorry.

“I has three jobs.” He says, rubbing his middle finger over the warped fingernail of his right thumb. “Well, two now. The takeaway closed.”

“Okay, and how many hours a week would you say that you work?”

Jack sighs, trying to count them up in his head and promptly giving up. She’s the doctor, let her do the fucking maths. He takes a deep breath, then rattles them off.

“I does seven ‘til five Monday through Saturday at the construction site, an’ then every evenin’ I does six-thirty ‘til eleven at Medda’s theatre, plus Sunday afternoons. An’ then I used to do eleven-thirty through three at Geno’s, but ‘s shut now.”

The doctor blinks. “I think that’s enough to make anybody tired.”

“I’ll say.” Jack snorts, looking down and shaking his head. His lap is covered in tiny shreds of tissue. He realises that he’s been pulling the tissue that the doctor gave him to pieces in his lap, scattering them across his denim covered thighs. His thoughts feel a bit like that, scattered like confetti.

“Is there a reason that you work so much?”

“I pays for my brother to go through school.”

“How old’s your brother?”

“Nineteen.” _And better than I’ll ever be._

“So he’s three years younger than you? Four?”

_What is this? The Spanish inquisition?_ “Sure.”

The doctor presses her lips together. She’s starting to get irritated with Jack’s monosyllabic answers, he can tell. “Your m- Medda. Medda tells me that you had guardianship over him? After you aged out of the foster system?”

“Yeah. CPS don’t much care so long as you’s got an apartment an’ ain’t a junkie.” Jack still isn’t entirely sure how he managed to convince CPS that he was a responsible adult able to care for his fourteen-year-old brother, but he’s sure glad that he did. The thought of Race still being stuck with Snyder is almost enough to send him into another of those panic-whatever-the-fucks.

“So, you’re close with your brother?”

_Does close mean co-dependent?_ “Hope so.”

“And have you spoken to him about having suicidal thoughts?”

Well, that took a turn. Jack is not just not on this woman’s page, she’s in a different library. “What? What the fuck are you on about?”

“Jack. You tried to kill yourself.” She says, very slowly, as if he’s a young child who doesn’t understand. “You do remember that, right?”

It’s fucking weird, hearing somebody just say it like that, like trying to top yourself is just a thing that people do. And it’s weird, too, to hear it applied to him. Because he hadn’t _tried_ to kill himself, not really. He just took some sleeping pills and stood on a bridge. Ain’t no crime in that, is there? He nods anyway.

“Do you have other people in your life? Friends?” The doctor presses, clearly seeing that she’s not going to get very far with her current line of questioning.

Jack tries not to laugh at the notion. “A couple.”

That’s a lie. One of the leaders at the group home told him once that he shouldn’t lie to doctors, because they were trying to help him. Admittedly, seven-year-old Jack _had_ just tried to tell the doctor that he was Race’s dad so they would let him go with him for his asthma appointment instead of their foster mom, which was a pretty stupid lie that the doctor naturally saw right through. Jack had told the truth to every doctor he’d met for three years after that, until one of the group home patrons came to look round and introduced himself as Dr. Andrews. Dr. Andrews wasn’t nice, especially not when Jack told him (truthfully) that he had dirty fingernails, something Jack himself was regularly told off for by one of the group home leaders. Jack remembers pain, after that, and something bloody clutched between the gnashing teeth of a pair of pliers. Dr. Andrews talked to him about not answering back as he cleaned it up. Jack’s thumbnail grows funny now. He doesn’t like telling the truth to doctors.

“Don’t you think that they would miss you?”

Jack shrugs. “They’d get over it.”

“Is there somebody that you would miss, if you lost them? Somebody that you wouldn’t just get over their death?”

_Race. Medda._ Just the thought of either of them dying makes Jack wonder whether he can actually keep his lunch down. Then he realises that he’s probably too close to Medda, if he feels about her hypothetical death the same sort of way he feels about Race’s, albeit lesser. That could be dangerous. He should probably work on putting some distance between the two of them.

“Sure.”

“Don’t you think other people might feel like that about you?” She asks.

Jack finds himself wondering when this will all be over. What’s going to happen when they finally let him out? Will they ever let him out? Will Medda take him home and pretend to be his mom until he can find some other way to top himself? Will Race have to drop out of college to pay for him to go to some sort of rehab facility? Both of these options seem less preferable than being dead. Both of these options work out worse for those other people than him being dead.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “Nobody needs me no more. I ain’t the kind o’ person people miss.”

Jack hears a noise from behind him, stifled and small like a kicked puppy. Turning around, he realises that Medda is crying, though he can’t imagine how she’s managing that. He just feels a bit numb. Honestly, he’d kind of forgotten that she was still sitting there, listening. He wonders whether he’s said something wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Jack wants to offer her his tissue, but it’s blood covered now and in pieces in his lap. The doctor gets there first.

“Would you like a tissue, ma’am?” The doctor produces a box of tissues and offers one to a sniffling Medda with a simpering, sympathetic smile. Then she turns back to Jack. “I think those tears prove you wrong, Jack. I’m going to prescribe you some antidepressants and book you in for some appointments with our resident trauma therapist.”

The bottom drops out of Jack’s stomach, but he doesn’t let his face change. _Don’t let them see._ He folds his arms across his chest. “I ain’t got no medical insurance.”

“That’s okay.” The doctor smiles. It’s bordering on creepy now, honestly. Jack wonders if she might have distant cousin with a penchant for balloons who lives in a sewer. “We have charitable funds for people like yourself who used to be in the foster care system. You won’t have to pay.”

“That’s real nice o’ you, but I think you oughta use that money for somebody else. Some kid wi’ cancer or somethin’.”

“That decision is not yours to make.” That fucking smile.

Jack gets to his feet, trying not to let the doctor see quite how much his stomach screams at him as he does so, gesturing toward the door. “I could just walk outta here, you know?”

“You could.” The doctor looks infuriatingly unconcerned. If she wasn’t a girl, she’d be trying to psychoanalyse him with a fist in her mouth. “But with the answers you’ve given me, I am able, and perfectly willing, to place you under psychiatric hold if you try to.”

Jack clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides. Then he sits back down.


	7. so how should i presume?

Medda can’t help herself from casting worried glances across to where Jack is sat in the passenger seat as they drive away from the hospital. He hasn’t said a word since they left the office, not even when she told him that she’s called the construction company to tell them he’s sick and that he’s got two weeks off. Jack doesn’t really know what to do with that kind of information. He’s not had a week off since he started working when he was thirteen, never mind two. He just grunts, staring determinedly out of the window like he can’t bear to look at her. His fingers work to peel the sticky label off the packet of antidepressants that the pretty nurse handed to him.

The silence inside the truck is like the humidity outside it. It makes Medda’s dress grow damp under her arms and across her back. “Do you want the radio on, baby?”

Jack just shrugs, so Medda takes that as agreement. She turns the radio on. It’s playing some godawful country station where the topics of songs are limited to trucks, girls, and beer. When the man whose voice appears in the car goes from singing to borderline yodelling, she changes the station. There aren’t many around here and it ends up on a top forty station which is currently broadcasting a man rapping about sports cars, girls, and shots. Shots both of the drink variety and the gun variety. Medda turns the radio off.

The rest of the journey is quiet.

The first thing Jack sees when they pull up outside Medda’s theatre is the little beat-up old car that belongs to Davey. Race is here. Jack starts to shake.

Okay, so, he’s going to die. He was hoping to go nice and quick, sleeping pills and stepping into thin air, but apparently the universe couldn’t even let him have that.

“Jack, honey, look at me, okay? I need you to look at me.” She needs him. He can do most anything if she needs him, so he turns his head, even though the action feels like it might crack him clean in two. “Hold my hands, baby, yeah, that’s right. C’mon, I need you to breathe with me, real slow, okay, in an’ out. In. Out. That’s good, Jack, that’s real good. In an’ out.”

Slowly, the monster retreats into his chest. Its claws have torn his throat to shreds, but it isn’t trying to choke him anymore. And then Jack nearly dies all over again as the car door is yanked open behind him. He has to grab onto the seat to make sure he doesn’t fall entirely out of the car, head whipping round, already planning out a thousand different ways to make sure whoever it is doesn’t hurt him too badly.

“I hate you so much.”

It’s Race. Race hates him. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he? Jack doesn’t know anybody who doesn’t hate him. Not even himself. It’s written all over his brother’s face, the hatred, the disappointment, the fear. Race’s eyes are swollen, his hair stuck up at odd angles where there have been fingers running through it. Jack wonders whether his little brother has finally found the girl who is going to take him out of Jack’s life entirely, whether the mussing of Race’s curls is down to her. It would be just his luck.

Unfastening his seatbelt, Jack gets out, not meeting his brother’s eyes. “I know, kid.”

“What the fuck were you thinkin’?” Race shouts, a sudden explosion as he shoves Jack up against the side of the truck. Jack’s head hits the metal of the side of the truck with a thump that feels as though it might crack his skull in two. The pain in Jack’s stomach that’s left over from the hospital flares. Jack closes his eyes and tries very hard not to throw up. Throwing up on Race isn’t exactly going to help his case, at this stage. Race has never hit him in actual anger before, but he wouldn’t blame him right now. Jack reckons he can take at least a few punches, just to get the worst of Race’s anger out. “Didja ever for one second stop an’ think what it’d do to me if you topped yourself? What was I s’posed to do wi’out you, huh?”

Weird. Race hasn’t hit him. Jack opens his eyes again and shrugs. “Davey said there was bursaries an’ shit.”

“What?” Race’s brow furrows as he steps away from Jack before realisation dawns across his face. “You think I’s talkin’ ‘bout finances right now?”

“What else wouldja be talkin’ ‘bout?”

Medda appears at Jack’s side and puts her arm around his shoulders, guiding him toward her apartment. Jack knows that he should shrug off her arm – he knows where he’s going, after all, and he’s supposed to be trying to distance himself from Medda, isn’t he? But he’s so tired and surely it can’t hurt to let her look after him, at least for a little while. At least until she gets fed up and leaves.

“You ain’t jus’ some sorta credit card on legs to me, Jack.” Race snaps, hurrying up the path to keep in step with them. “You’s my brother. We’s family.” Jack doesn’t respond. “I ain’t a kid no more. Why won’t you jus’ talk to me?”

“Cos you _is_ still a kid, Racer!” Jack rounds on him, forcing his sore throat to sustain a shout. Race jumps back from him like he’s been burned. Medda’s arm has slipped from his shoulders and Jack misses its comforting weight as he throws his hands in the air, laughing out the next lot of words even though they aren’t funny at all. “Every other kid your age is livin’ in a college dorm on their parents’ dime, an’ you deserve that. You deserve to have that and not hafta worry ‘bout nothin’. ‘Specially not me.”

“You deserve that too.” Race whispers. “You deserve a chance to be a normal twenty-two-year-old.”

“I don’ deserve nothin’.”

Race’s bottom lip starts to tremble at that and no, this is categorically not something that Jack can deal with right now. He can’t deal with a crying Race, not today. He scrubs his hands over his face. He’s got this throbbing pain behind his right eye that won’t leave him the fuck alone. Jack almost cries himself when he feels Medda put her arm back around his shoulders and start to steer him inside again.

“Race, baby. ‘S been a long day.” She sighs, opening the door and letting Jack toe off his boots before leading him towards the guest room. “Why don’ we let Jack have an hour in bed an’ we’ll talk ‘bout it then, hm?”

Jack doesn’t look back at his brother when he says: “There ain’t nothin’ to talk ‘bout.”

As Medda tucks him into bed, still in his t-shirt and jeans, Jack wonders whether he’s supposed to feel indignant that she’s tucking him in like he’s five. He probably ought to, at least if he had a bit more energy. It feels nice, though, letting her look after him. And it’s only for a bit, after all, she’ll get annoyed with him soon enough and he’ll be out on his ear again. He knows the drill. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts, right?

Medda’s guest bedroom has two pillows, like the hospital bed did, and this duvet that’s softer than anything he’s ever felt. He has to remind himself that while, yes, he should enjoy it while it lasts, he shouldn’t get used to feeling like he’s lying on a cloud. Medda sits down on the edge of the bed and takes his hand in hers. It’s testament to how firmly she starts to speak to him that he manages to ignore the fizzing under his skin and pay attention.

“Right, honey. Here’s what’s goin’ to happen. You’s goin’ to have a nap. When you wakes up, we’s goin’ to sit down an’ sort all this crap out with your brother. We’s goin’ to eat some dinner, you’s goin’ to take your pills. You’s goin’ to live here wi’ me for a while, an’ you’ll go back to work at the construction site, an’ you’s goin’ to go to your therapy. An’ you’s goin’ to get better. ‘S all goin’ to get better, baby.”

Getting better sounds like a lot of work. And Jack works forty-eight hour shifts on the regular. It sounds hard, and Jack is fed up of things being hard. He wants things to be easy. Dying was supposed to be easy. No, this getting better seems like a lot of work to put in not knowing if he’s even going to get something out of it.

“What if it don’?” He asks, voice quiet as he picks at the bobbles on the fabric of the duvet cover. “What if – what if ‘s this bad forever?”

“Honey, it ain’t. I know you don’ believe me right now, but you’s just gotta try, okay? It’s a long road, but it’s me an’ you an’ Race, and we’ll be okay.” She squeezes his hand. “All you’s gotta do is try.”

“I don’ think I know how to try, Medda.”

“Y’think any of us do? Jack, I’s spent the last four years thinkin’ o’ you as my son, an’ you sit there in that doctor’s office an’ you says that ain’t your momma, that’s just Medda. An’ I realise that I’s been foolin’ myself this whole time.”

Jack looks her in the face for the first time and almost dies from the pain written across it. “I’s sorry. I-“

“You ain’t got to be sorry. We’s failed you, me an’ Race. You’s workin’ so hard that we didn’t see past it. But you’s still my son, in my head at least. We’s goin’ to get through.”

 _You’s still my son._ Why would Medda want him for a son? Medda is nice. She could have anybody she wants around, anytime. Why is she bothered about informally adopting the fucked-up foster kid who tried to jump off a bridge?

“You ain’t failed. I fucked up.” Jack says, his voice heavy with meaning. “ _I’s_ fucked up.”

There’s a knock on the door. When it opens, it’s Race and he gives Medda this look that Jack can’t entirely work out. His eyes are saying something, but Jack can’t hear it. As Medda stands up to leave, patting his leg through the covers, Jack wonders when he lost the ability to read his little brother. Race waits until Medda has left until he wanders over, lifts up the covers, and climbs into bed with him. It’s a bit cramped, the two of them in this single bed, but it’s nothing they haven’t done before. At Snyder’s they shared one single mattress on the floor for the best part of six years and they turned out just fine. Well, Race did, at least.

“D’you remember when we used to do this as kids?” Race asks, wrapping his arms around Jack like some sort of limpet and shoving his face into the place where Jack’s shoulder meets his neck.

It kind of hurts, Jack’s stomach is still sore from whatever the hell they did to get those pills out of him in the hospital, but he isn’t complaining, not when Race is touching him for the first time in months and his skin is feeling all fizzy again.

“What, when you was havin’ all those nightmares?”

“An’ when I wasn’t. Just didn’t wanta be away from you.” Race presses his face into Jack’s shoulder a little harder. “I – I still don’, Jack. That wasn’t what this was about.”

Jack stares at the ceiling so that he doesn’t have to look at his little brother. “I know.”

“I don’ think you do.” Race props himself up on one elbow and stares Jack down. “Why’d you think I was ringin’ you every night?”

Jack gives in and looks over at him, squinting a little. “Cos you’s too nice for your own good an’ felt like you oughta?”

“You absolute idiot. You’s always done everythin’ for me, right?”

“O’ course.” Stupid question. Since the day Jack walked out of their parents’ apartment with Race in one arm and a bin-liner of clothes in the other and got into the car of that awful social worker, the only things he’s ever done are things he’s done for Race.

“So get better. ‘F you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for me, cos I can’t do this shit wi’out you.”

Jack sighs, “Race-“ 

“I’s goin’ to take those bursaries. I don’ want you workin’ stupid hours no more. An’ I’s goin’ to come home least once a week.” Firm, non-negotiable.

“You don’ hafta –“

“No, I _need_ to. I need you.”

 _I need you_. _I need you. I need you._ Jack feels as though he could do anything, just about now. Even keep living. _I need you. I need you. I need you._

Race wriggles around a little bit, then, cutting through Jack’s thoughts, seemingly fed up with the silence, demands: “Shift the fuck over, I’s droppin’ off the mattress here.”

“You always was a covers stealer.” Jack grumbles, but moves over anyway.

“Pot, meet kettle.” Race snarks back, one of his knobbly knees digging into Jack’s thigh as he shifts around, trying to get comfortable.

“Fuck off.” Jack presses his side up against the wall, slotting one foot down into the snug gap between the mattress and the wall to make room for his brother. “I had to put up wi’ years o’ you wettin’ the soddin’ bed.”

Race makes a noise of indignation that Jack can only describe as a squawk. “That was a reaction to trauma-“

“What kinda ten-year-old wets the fuckin’ bed-“

“An’ yet you never complained-“

“Didn’t wanta make you feel bad-“

“Aw, Jackie, when didja get all sensitive to _feelin’s-_ “

“Shuddup.” Jack lodges an elbow in between two of Race’s ribs, which is apparently what it takes to finally settle him. He’ll have to remember that technique for next time. Jack wonders when he started thinking that there would be a next time, that he’d be around for one. “‘F you wets the bed, you’s the one changin’ the sheets.”

Half an hour later, when Race is snoring, his face pressed into Jack’s side and a wet patch appearing there on Jack’s t-shirt where his little brother is drooling, Medda slips back in. Jack grimaces at her, adding a pointed eye roll at his little brother. Medda just smiles like it’s the sweetest thing she’s ever seen. She produces a sketchbook and hands it to Jack, along with a pencil.

“You goin’ to do me a drawin’, baby?” She asks, keeping her voice low.

Jack takes the sketchbook and pencil, but bites his lip, not opening it. The pencil feels foreign in his hand. When he used to draw, it used to feel like it was his, like it was just an extension of him, an extension of his arm. The worlds in his brain could just flow straight out onto the paper. Now, it’s like he’s got to turn on some strange sort of tap that’s rusted shut.

“I don’ think I know how to, no more.”

Medda’s smile drops a little, before she asks. “‘F I give you a description, y’think you could draw then?”

Jack thinks about it for a moment, turning the pencil over in his fingers. The water that comes out of the tap will probably be rusty at first. But it’s got to run clear sometime, right? “Maybe.”

“Wait a minute.” Medda smiles, bustling out of the room and then back in, holding a slim paperback book. She seats herself in the armchair in the corner and cracks it open. “Here, ‘s one o’ my favourite poems. I need you to draw it for me.”

“Okay.”

Jack can do most things, if he’s needed. So, he puts his pencil to the paper as Medda starts to read to him and wonders when the warmth of her voice started to seep into his chest and out through his pencil, because he hasn’t wanted to draw like he wants to draw now in a long, long time. Race, at his side. Pencil, on paper. Medda opens her mouth to begin.

Jack stops her. “Momma?”

Medda’s head flies up so quickly that Jack’s afraid she’ll hurt herself. He’s gone too far, of course he has, it was too much, too much too soon, she’s still annoyed about what he said in the doctor’s office, it sounds like he’s mocking her -

“Yes, baby?” Oh. She’s smiling. She’s smiling wider than he’s seen her do all day.

Jack swallows. His throat is lined with shards of broken glass. “I’s goin’ to try. Dunno ‘f it’ll work. But I’ll try.”

“ _Let us go then, you and I…”_


End file.
